How to Make an Old Fashioned

Basically the OG cocktail, the first reference to this drink—as well as the first published definition of the word "cocktail"—came in the May 13, 1806 edition of a newspaper called The Balance and Columbian Repository. It was there that the paper's editor referred to a cocktail as consisting of spirits, bitters, water, and sugar.

As for the name "Old Fashioned," that didn't come about until 1881, when a bartender at the Pendennis Club in Louisville, Kentucky made the drink—this time with bourbon, bitters, club soda, muddled sugar, and ice—to honor Colonel James E. Pepper, a prominent bourbon distiller, who eventually brought it to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel bar in New York City.

All of which is to say, it's a cocktail that's been around for a while. And for good reason. The subtle sweetness makes it smoother than a lot of other whiskey-based drinks, plus it just has that aura of Rat Pack cool. Fortunately, it's also an easy cocktail to make. Almost as easy as it is to drink.

Old Fashioned

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Ingredients

Yields:
1

2 oz.
rye or bourbon

3
dashes Angostura Bitters

1
Sugar Cube

Club Soda

1
old fashioned glass

Directions

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Cook Time:
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Place the sugar cube (or 1/2 teaspoon loose sugar) in an Old Fashioned glass.

Wet it down with 2 or 3 dashes of Angostura bitters and a short splash of club soda.